


What of Sacrifice?

by convolutedConcussion



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: A Serious Lack of Resolution, M/M, More Self-Indulgence, More angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:22:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither of them are going to sacrifice their ideals for the other, but for now they're home.  That's really all either can ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What of Sacrifice?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry about the liberties I took with canon I'm sorta drunk when I write these things.

Charles Xavier experienced death, of course, before Shaw. He felt the light of his mother's mind go out in his own head, the shock of separation. There was silence, total silence, and for a long time after he couldn't imagine anything else. Never close, often at odds, he still mourned her in a distant way, but his grief faded. The sensation of losing contact so completely stayed with him, is still with him. There were others, and he was more prepared, but death, he thinks, will always leave him shaken, mentally. Shaw was different. He felt everything, felt himself die, felt the pain and the screaming indignity and the begging, god, the begging was the worst because it was so loud, so _loud_ and it was part of him. The helmet is like death. There's silence, a terrible blindness. But it's imposing. It's like swimming in a pool and bumping into a wall. He _knows_ it's there. Feels it like a marble on his tongue. He feels it in the darkness of his bedroom, in the quiet night, pressing past the dreams of those who share his house. It must be very late, if Hank is not awake.

His eyes may be open, he can't be sure. He takes in the silence, the pain, made cold by the knowledge that the other man chooses to remain lost to him. Here, in this room. The silence is broken when his hands smooth down the sheet covering his chest. The bed dips; he's holding his breath.

“You said you felt me in emptiness,” a voice drones, dull and tired. “Did you look for me?”

“You know I did,” he answers, voice sleep-hoarse and rough. “My friend, you know I have been looking.” And he has. He's been searching for him in the eyes in others, searching for signs of life and freedom. For all that he abhors Erik's methods, he wants him safe, wants him out of the hands that would repeat what he's already experienced. He would catch glimpses, would pull away before temptation overcame him and he used another to beg his cause.

“Why didn't you make me come with you?” he demands. “Because you could have. You could have brought me here.”

“I could not,” he says. He clears his throat. “I want you home, not imprisoned.” And there's a lot more to be said, that could be said, but the weight on the bed is so tense and still as to be almost frightening in its intensity.

“'Home,'” the other man scoffs. “What home?”

Blind as he is, it feels deceptively safe to tell him, “You will always have a home here, Erik.”

It's true in the metal knobs and locks he keeps on the doors in spite of his better judgment and in spite of Hank's advice. It's true in the bedroom kept clean and unused, and the small things the man accumulated while there so long ago, a memorial through addiction and pain and now a testament, perhaps saying nothing good about Charles. He's stronger now, the voices in his mind are back where they ought to me, a dull echo, and he feels the dreams in the house around him. He can control it; he has faith that he will not break. But there was always something about Erik's mind that made him waver, made him want to dive where he wasn't allowed. He feels the rush of the other man's consciousness come swimming back into view, the giddy completion. His own tries to pull back, contain itself, but Erik has a way of pushing, of shouting above the din, of being heard in spite of not  _wanting_ to be heard. It's so loud he doesn't hear the helmet fall to the floor but feels the other push it away as if he had done it himself. He's drowning, he's grappling for control, he's--

“ _Charles,”_ he hears inside and out and he can breathe again. He hears his name a thousand times in a moment. “You could have,” he says, voice hard and almost manic. “You could have made me come--” _home_ , he doesn't finish out loud. He hears it then, in all that desperation, a disconnected idea of absolution, wonders if Erik even realizes he's asking for it.

Charles pulls away, puts distance between the two of them until he knows he is himself, but he feels the other's protest. Less dizzy, less disoriented, he can form words again. “It would have killed one of us,” he whispers. He feels the unasked question, confused and jumbled but somehow clear. “Come  _home_ ,” he begs, voice cracking.

Without opening his lips, Erik asks what place he has there, and it's hard to tell if the question is really meant for him and the question is accompanied by a raw, grating sort of agony. A weight settles on Charles' chest, a hand that he takes in both his own and draws up to his face. He shows him, because it's easier to, because it's too complicated for something so inefficient as speech. He shows the measures he's taken to ensure Erik could always come back. He shows him himself, the parts of his heart and mind that ached for him, hoped for him in spite of himself. The parts of himself he'd kept open, wounds he wouldn't let close, parts of himself inextricably tied to him, tied up in him. A place has always been here for him, he tries to show. And likely always would. There's something of despair in that thought. A note of pleading, don't do this if you won't stay, don't come here and run away from me, follows, and he tries to cut it off because it isn't  _fair_ to him to do that.

“I'm _sorry_ ,” he gasps out loud, ashamed. What he wants and what he can ask for are such vastly different things, the knowledge leaves him hollow. Erik shifts, fingers dragging, climbs onto the bed to press their foreheads together, scrapes his nails over Charles' scalp. He's projecting, shouting an emotion that's indefinable, scary in its intimacy. It's not a promise. They know, in that moment, as one that Erik can't promise to stay, won't make promises he can't keep if only to Charles, both too unrelenting and too different.

But Erik asks if he can stay for now, and Charles is powerless to reject him.

As one sleeps, the other stays away, hands stroking skin and hair and scars, whatever they can reach. He builds his walls back up, prepares himself as much as possible. The helmet is in the room, and maybe that's important. There will come a time when their paths will separate again. All the love in the world can't change that, can't undo what's been done, and they'll have to confront that. For now, though, he can let the man rest, can savor the closeness and, for better or worse, ignore the complication until he absolutely has to deal with it. He's been getting really good at this sort of thing.

In the morning, Erik wakes and smiles, sleepy but tight, up at him. “I cannot believe,” he says, “You're keeping that hair.”

Sighing, Charles replies, “I have seen the future and in that future I go bald. I'm keeping the hair.”

There's laughter in his head and he allows himself to grow warm with it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually all set to be a companion piece to my other DOFP work, A Sip, and I think there are some references but they're not so important. I keep thinking about Charles and how it feels when people die to a telepath and how the helmet feels and I basically went, "Canon? Fuck canon. I just want to write angst."
> 
> So, yeah. I'm like 90% sadness and this is a result.


End file.
